Google: Android, Chrome OS to converge eventually

Google ventured into the operating system world last year with the introduction of Android, an operating system intended for mobile phones, and most recently with the netbook-oriented Chrome OS. For now, the two projects are evidently separate, but according to the company's co-founder Sergey Brin they are likely to become a single operating system in the future.

Brin revealed this in an informal discussion with reporters after the company's Chrome OS presentation last Thursday, adding that the common Linux and WebKit code base present in both projects facilitates a merger. His comments address many questions raised by Chrome OS's original announcement in July, but we can't say they come as much of a surprise given today's increasing convergence of mobile and desktop platforms.

That said, there is one fundamental difference between Android and Chrome OS that Google will need to sort out before the two platforms can become one: whereas the first lets users install their own apps on the mobile phone's memory, Chrome OS is meant to be entirely reliant on web applications, using local storage only to speed up those processes.